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Address of Gen. E. Porter Alexander, Delivered on Alumni 
Day, West Point Military Academy Centennial, June 9, '02 



The Confederate Veteran 



Of the many orations delivered on this day by such 
able men as President Roosevelt, General Horace Por- 
ter, Honorable Elihu Root, Secretary of War; General 
T. JT. Wood, General Ruger, and others, that of Gen- 
eral Alexander, who was the chief of artillery of Long- 
street's corps at Gettysburg, was in many ways the 
most imaginative, brilliant, and patriotic. While this 
speech was patriotic to the extent indicated, there was 
none of the hypocrisy of backsliding from a cause once 
honestly defended. Instead, there was displayed a 
"breadth of view that fronv.orre mind at least removed as 
by an instantaneous process the cobwebs of section- 
alism,. As such, believing that it will exert a valuable 
.influence in kindling the patriotism and thus in uniting 
all sections of our country, we take pleasure in bringing 
it to your attention. 



Ten thousand copies of this have been printed for 
free distribution 

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Publishers . of Avery's "History of the United 
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THE CONFEDERATE VETERAN 



ADDRESS OF GEN. E. P. ALEXANDER, ON ALUMNI 
DAY, WEST POINT CENTENNIAL, JUNE 9, I9O2 

Decidedly the feature of Alumni Day, Mon- 
day, Jur*S 9th, at West Point, was the 
speech of General E. Porter Alexander of 
Georgia. It was the first occasion on which 
the Confederate Army had been officially 
recognized in any proceedings at the Military 
Academy. Indeed, it cannot be said to have 
been officially recognized on this occasion, since 
these proceedings were taken under the direc- 
tion of the associated graduates. General 
Ruger spoke for the West Pointers on the 
Union side, and General Alexander for those 
on the Confederate side. He was chief of 
artillery of Longstreet's corps, and directed 
the Confederate fire in the famous artillery 
duel at Gettysburg. His speech was contin- 
ually applauded, especially his reference to 
General Longstreet, who occupied a seat on 
the platform near the speaker, and whose 



name provoked an outburst of cheering that 
lasted several minutes. Following is General 
Alexander's speech in full : 

" 'Once more the light of Jackson's sword 

Far flashes through the gloom, 
There Hampton rides and there once more 

The toss of Stuart's plume. 

" 'Oh! life goes back through years to-day 
And we are men once more, 
And that old hill is Arlington, 
And there, the alien shore! 

" 'And over yonder on the heights 
The hostile camp-fires quiver, 
And sullenly 'twixt us and them 
Flows by Potomac's river.' 

"The Confederate veteran! With these 
words does there not arise in every mind the 
thought of a meteoric army, which over forty 
years ago sprang into existence, as it would 
seem, out of space and nothingness, and after 
a career of four years, unsustained by treasury 
or arsenal, but unsurpassed for brilliant fighting 
and lavish outpour of blood, vanished from earth 
as utterly as if it had been a phantom of imag- 
ination. It had followed as a banner, a Starry 
Cross, born in the fire and smoke of its battle 
line; which had flown over its charging col- 
umns on many fields, and under many leaders, 
whose names proud history will forever cher- 
ish, and then in a night it also had taken its 
flight from earth, to be seen no more of men. 
A Federal historian wrote of this army : 'Who 
can forget it that once looked upon it? That 



array of tattered uniforms and bright muskets 
— that body of incomparable infantry, the 
Army of Northern Virginia — which for four 
years carried the revolt on its bayonets, oppos- 
ing a constant front to the mighty concentra- 
tions of power brought against it, which, 
receiving terrible blows, did not fail to give the 
like, and which, vital in all its parts, died only 
with its annihilation.' 

"And the whole people who had created that 
annihilated army and had upheld that vanished 
flag, and in their behalf had sacrificed its all, 
now with one consent gave to the cause for 
which they had striven vainly, but so well, the 
title, 'The Lost Cause.' And this people 
mourned over their Lost Cause as the captive 
Israelites mourned over Zion: 'If I forget 
thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget 
its cunning and my tongue cleave to the roof of 
my mouth.' But they buried their grief deep 
in their own hearts, and, exchanging swords 
and guns for implements of industry, set them- 
selves to restoring their desolated homes and 
rebuilding their shattered fortunes. 

"And now a generation has passed away. 
The smoke of civil conflict has vanished for- 
ever from the sky, and the whole country, 
under the new conditions evolved in its four 
years' struggle, finds itself united in developing 
its vast resources in successful rivalry with the 
greatest nations of the earth. Whose vision 
is now so dull that he does not recognize the 
blessing it is to himself and to his children to 
live in an undivided country? Who would 
today relegate his own State to the position it 

5 



would hold in the world were it declared 
sovereign, as are the States of Central and 
South America? To ask these questions is to 
answer them. And the answer is the ack- 
nowledgment that it was best for the South 
that the cause was 'lost/ The right to secede, 
the stake for which we fought so desperately, 
were it now offered us as a gift, we would 
reject as we would a proposition of suicide. 
Let me briefly review the story of this change 
of sentiment. 

"We believed, and still believe, that its sov- 
ereignty was intended to be reserved by each 
and every State when it ratified the Constitu- 
tion. It was universally taught among us that 
in this feature there was divinely inspired wis- 
dom. It may have been wisdom for that 
century. Each State was then an independent 
agricultural community. The railroad, the 
steamship, the telegraph, were undreamed of 
on earth. But, as in nature, whenever the 
climate has changed, the fauna and flora have 
been forced to change and adapt themselves 
to new environments, so among mankind must 
modes of government be modified to conform 
to new conditions. The steamboat, railroad, 
and telegraph by i860 had made a new planet 
out of the one George Washington knew. Na- 
tional commerce had been born, and it was 
realized that State sovereignty was utterly in- 
compatible with its full development. The 
'inspired wisdom' of the previous century had 
now become but foolishness. Nature's great 
law of evolution, against which no constitution 
can prevail, at once brought into play to over- 
6 



» 

id 






turn it forces as irresistible as those of a vol- 
cano. But such Darwinian conceptions as 
those of political evolution had then entered 
few men's minds. Patrick Henry had said, 
'Give me liberty or give me death.' Surely it 
would not be liberty if we could not secede 
whenever we wished to. Holding these views, 
we should have been cowards had we not 
resisted to the last extremity. And posterity 
should be grateful for our having forced the 
issue and fought it out to the bitter end. 

"Now, I have learned to appreciate the lim- 
ited range of Patrick Henry's views, and have 
discarded them in favor of Darwinian theories. 
I want neither liberty nor death ; I want con- 
formation to environment. And as the changes 
in our planet still go on, and as international 
commerce has grown up, a Siamese twin to 
national commerce, I applaud our nation's 
coming out of the swaddling bands of its in- 
fancy and entering upon its grand inheritance. 
Let it stand for universal civilization. This 
is but a small and crowded planet, now that 
science has brought its ends together by her 
great inventions. Neither states nor nations 
can longer dwell to themselves. An irrepres- 
sible conflict is on between barbarism and 
civilization. Through human imperfection 
much that must be done may seem harsh and 
cruel. Much that has happened doubtless was 
so to our aborigines, but for all that we must 
look forward and not backward and walk bold- 
ly in the paths of progress. 

"Now, for their bearing upon my story, let 
me speak briefly of two matters of history. 
7 



Mr. Charles Francis Adams/ in a recent ad- 
dress, has pointed out that it is due to General 
Lee that at Appomattox, in April, 1865, a 
surrender of the Confederate Army was made, 
instead of the struggle being prolonged into a 
guerilla war, such as has been recently seen in 
South Africa. This action does indeed place 
Lee upon an exalted plane. And it fortunately 
happened that his rival actor in this great 
drama was General Grant, a brother graduate 
of the Military Academy. Our Alma Mater 
may cherish the record of that day, when two 
of her sons, having each written his name so 
high in the annals of war, now united to turn 
the nation into the paths of peace. For Gen- 
eral Grant, who has been proudly called by his 
victorious army 'Unconditional Surrender' 
Grant, now seemed only to seek excuses to 
spare the Confederates every possible mortifi- 
cation and to save them from individual losses, 
even at the expense of his own government. 
His example was immediately followed by 
every man in his army down to the humblest 
teamster. Time fails me to describe the 
friendliness, courtesy, and generosity with 
which the whole victorious army seemed filled. 
The news of the surrender and of its liberal 
terms was received everywhere with similar 
feelings of generous conciliation. In proof, it 
is only necessary to refer to the early negotia- 
tions between Sherman and Johnston. Presi- 
dent Lincoln also fully shared these feelings, 
and even planned for the South financial com- 
pensation for its loss of property by the eman- 
8 



cipation of its slaves. Thus, for six days, — ■ 
from April 9th to 14th, — there was every 
prospect that reconstruction would be accom- 
plished in the spirit manifested by Grant and 
under the direction of Lincoln, who, without 
her knowledge, was at that time the South's 
most powerful friend. Our treatment would 
have been not less liberal than that we have 
just seen accorded by the British to the Boers. 

"Oh, the pity of it ! That this spirit of peace 
and good-will could not have been permitted 
to spread over the whole country, and influ- 
ence the breasts alike of both victors and 
vanquished. By the fatuous act of an assassin, 
in a moment this fair vision was shattered, 
and in its place, and without fault upon her 
part, there was invoked against the prostrate 
South a whirlwind of # rage and resentment. 
Indeed, it is due to the restraint put upon the 
political leaders of the North by General Grant 
that the death of Lincoln did not mark for the 
South the beginning of greater woes than 
those of the war itself. 

"There resulted many years of bitterness 
and estrangement between the sections, retard- 
ing the growth of national spirit and yielding 
but slowly, even to the great daily object-les- 
son, of the development of our country. But 
at last, in the fulness of time, the stars in their 
courses have taken up the work. As in 1865 
one wicked hand retarded our unification by 
the murder of Lincoln, so in 1898 another 
assassin, equally wicked and equally stupid, 
by the blowing up of the Maine, has given us a 



common cause and made us at last and indeed 
a nation, in the front rank of the world's work 
of civilization, with its greatest problems com- 
mitted to our care. 

"But there is still one thing more to be said. 
Was all our blood shed in vain? Was all the 
agony endured for the Lost Cause but as water 
spilled upon the sand? No! A thousand 
times, no! 

"We have set the world record for devotion 
to a cause. We have given to our children 
proud memories, and to history new names, 
to be a theme and an inspiration for unborn 
generations. The heroes of future wars will 
emulate our Lees and Jacksons. We have 
taught the armies of the world the casualties 
to be endured in battle; and the qualities of 
heart and soul developed both in our women 
and men, in the stress and strain of our poverty 
and in the furnace of our affliction, have made 
a worthier race, and have already borne rich 
reward in the building up of our country. 
But, above and beyond all, the firm bonds 
which today hold together this great nation 
could have never been wrought by debates in 
Congress. Human evolution has not yet pro- 
gressed so far. Such bonds must be forged, 
welded, and proved in the heat of battle and 
must be cemented in blood. Peace Congresses 
and arbitrations have never yet given birth to 
a nation, and this one had to be born in nature's 
way. 

"So much for the attitude of the South and 
the steps through which it has been reached. 
10 



But bear with me yet a little, for I cannot 
leave the thoughts and memories evoked by my 
theme without some reference to a few among 
the great figures who moved amid those 
scenes, lest my story should seem to you as 
one of Hamlet with Hamlet left out : 

" 'And Love, where death has set its seal, 
Nor age can chill, nor rival steal, 
Nor falsehood disavow.' 

"Shall I name to you at once the Confeder- 
ate hero who deserves the highest pedestal, 
who bore the greatest privations, and contrib- 
uted most freely of his blood to win every 
victory and resist every defeat? I name the 
private soldier. Practically without pay and 
on half rations, he enlisted for life or death and 
served out his contract. He did not look the 
fighting man he was. He was lean, sun- 
burned, and bearded, often barefoot and 
ragged. He had neither training nor disci- 
pline, except what he acquired in the field. 
He had only antiquated and inferior arms until 
he captured better ones in battle. He had not 
even military ambition, but he had one incen- 
tive which was lacking to his opponents — 
brave and loyal as they were. Meeting him 
on the march one might recognize in his eyes 
a certain far-away look. He was fighting for 
his home. From the time of Greece to that 
of South Africa, all history attests the stim- 
ulus of the thought of 'home' to the soldier 
fighting for it. And if some young military 
scientist among your bright boys can formu- 
11 



late an equation to express the battle power of 
an army, I am sure he will find the thought 
of 'home' to be the factor in it with highest 
exponent. So there was nothing anomalous 
about the fighting of our army. We fought 
for our homes under men that we loved and 
trusted. This brought out the best in every 
individual, whether private or general. 

" Upon our President, Jefferson Davis, there 
fell from the necessity of his prominent posi- 
tion not only defeat, but obloquy, and woes too 
many to enumerate. History, however, will 
do him justice as having been most worthy 
to represent us, whether as a man, a states- 
man, or a soldier. And as any compromise of 
the issue at stake would have only carried with 
it the seeds of another war, the nation is to 
be congratulated that to his high courage and 
devotion to his cause no compromise was pos- 
sible. And how now shall I speak to you of 
the great Lee, whom it was an education to 
know,— never elated, and never depressed, but 
always calm and audacious in reliance upon 
himself and his troops, who in their turn 
relied upon him and loved him unto death; 
of stern and grave Stonewall Jackson, trust- 
ing only in the God of battles and in the 
righteousness of his cause, but winning by the 
fierce courage his personality inspired; of 
Joseph E. Johnston, master of strategy in the 
great game of war, whose brain was 'reason's 
self incased in bone' ; of Beauregard, who won 
Bull Run by his personal tenacity and with 
such science and skill defended Sumter and 
12 



Petersburg; of Longstreet; whom Lee called 
his 'old war horse,' doing heavy work on every 
field, from Bull Run to Appomattox ; of A. P. 
Hill, whose name was last on the lips of Lee 
upon his death-bed, and of Jackson when he 
'crossed over the river to rest in the shade of 
the trees'; of genial, dashing Stuart, always 
ready for any venture and sanguine of suc- 
cess, who took up the battle left unfinished by 
Jackson's fall and carried it to its brilliant 
end ; of gifted Hampton, our Chevalier Bayard, 
with his sabre-scarred face, who served his 
State as effectively in peace as he had done 
in war, and 'always bore without abuse the 
grand old name of gentleman' ; of Hood, with 
his one leg and crippled arm, under whom the 
Texans loved to fight ; of good old Ewell, also 
with his one leg, and bald head and lustrous 
woodcock eye, who believed fighting to be 
the sole business of a soldier ; of Early, whose 
unreconciled spirit is perhaps still raiding up 
and down the Valley ; and of a thousand others 
whose forms and faces throng upon my mem- 
ory, and whose names history has inscribed 
upon her roll of honor. 

" It were a shorter task to try and enumer- 
ate the great fields of battle made historic by 
their valor. Dolorous and bootless Antietam 
is conspicuous as the bloodiest single day in 
I the annals of this continent. Pickett's charge 
i at Gettysburg was the brilliant culmination of 
\ a school of attack which has forever passed 
away with the advent of modern arms. But 
j Jackson's Valley campaign will always illus- 
13 



trate the correct principles of strategy, how- 
ever weapons may be altered or improved. 
Wilderness and Spottsylvania, where the Fed- 
eral Army in eight days suffered more casual- 
ties than befell in all the wars from the dis- 
covery of America to i860, were but the 
initial combats of what should be called the 
great 'Battle of Grant and Lee/ begun on the 
Rapidan on May 4, 1864, and fought without 
pause until ended at Appomattox on April 9, 
1865, eleven months and six days. History 
has scarcely a parallel for such supreme dis- 
play of battle power upon each side. At the 
opening, Grant marshalled 122,146 men, and 
61,274 followed Lee. In its progress every 
available reinforcement was called in by each 
side, the Confederates even robbing the cradle 
and the grave to repair their wasting ranks. 
At the end the Federal losses had reached a 
total of 124,390. The Confederate losses can 
never be known, for their army was wiped out 
of existence, and no reports were possible. 
But the final act was the surrender of 28,356 
Confederates to a force of 100,000 immedi- 
ately about them — a million men being in 
arms on the Union side. 

" And so, did time permit, lessons could be 
learned and stirring events be depicted from 
the memories of innumerable other scenes. 
But I prefer to leave the picture as it stands. 
We didn't go into our cause, we were born into 
it. We fought it out to its remotest end and 
suffered to the very utmost its dying aches and 
pains. But they were rich in compensations 
14 



and have proven to be only the birth-pangs of 
a new nation, in whose career we are proud 
to own and to bear a part. 

" And to our Alma Mater, who taught us, 
not the skill to unravel conflicting political 
creeds — not 

" 'That acumen to divide 
A hair 'twixt South and Sou'west side' — 

but rather to illustrate by our lives manly cour- 
age and loyalty to convictions, we commend 
the record of 

"'The Old Confederate Veteran, we know him as 
he stands 
And listens for the thunder of the far-off battle 

lands. 
He hears the crash of musketry, the smoke rolls 

like a sea, 
For he tramped the fields with Stonewall, and he 
climbed the heights with Lee. 

"'The Old Confederate Veteran, his life is in the 
past, 

And the war-cloud, like a mantle, round his 
rugged form is cast. 

He hears the bugle calling o'er the far and mys- 
tic sea, 

For he tramped the fields with Stonewall, and 
he climbed the heights with Lee'." 



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